a reply to:
jeep3r
I stumbled onto this video a few days ago, realized Mr Gilbertson was talking about my favorite topic, the ancient past (not the hoary antediluvian
ancient past, stretching on for eons), a time when events recorded in the franca lingua, the Bible, myths, legends and stories passed from generation
to generation, indicating something very wrong was happening. For almost 800 years. Some of our biggest "hits" occurred during that time, Exodus,
Joshua "commanding" the Sun to stand still, Ezekiel's fantastic ride, Gotterdammerung, a "dragon" "eating" the Sun, among the more exciting moments,
the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah,.
It's comforting to think of things, as geologists do, where everything violent happened "millions of years ago". I think you'd strike the entire
field dumb, if those words were outlawed. It is hard to date rock and dirt, but we can assert some order, if we start by insisting that "myths" are
not "amusing stories of heroes and fantastic achievements, but stories told without embellishment, or personal bias, to pass on to future generations
events, actions and characters that would otherwise be lost to time. The scale of my investigations is almost entirely within the last 45 millennia,
with most of it occurring in the period from Exodus to Ezekiel.
Religion, the worship of one God, as we know it now, grew out of this period, partly due to the manifestations they saw, or thought they did (more
about that later), and the fantastic nature of their accounts. The world turning over, waters rising into the skies (according to Norse myths, it
happened there, too), "wandering" in the "wilderness" for FORTY YEARS???? What's up with that? Joshua stopping the Sun in its course, the slaughter
of 185,000 men outside the gates of Jerusalem, Daniel "walking in the fire" (not the furnace, a mistranslation?), Ezekiel's fiery ride, the OT is
filled with exhibitions of "God's power", something sorely lacking in all other Biblical accounts after.
I would love to talk to Mr Gilbertson about it, because I feel he's on the right track, but the wrong siding, so to speak. If anyone knows his
address, please forward it to me. His theory is workable, if just a bit shy of the real story. The Grand Canyon was not eroded into its present
appearance "millions of years ago", but in historical times, over more than a thousand years, slightly more than the length of time I speak of,
because water sat in it for long periods, creating all the "signs" of erosion we see, confusing future researchers into thinking it was the action of
the Colorado River. Had the river dug the entire course, it would look, today, much like the upstream area, now under the waters of Lake Powell,
where the Colorado River crosses the ancient seabed and compressed zone around the Four Corners area, probably a polar location, before.
The Canyon was blocked, until the water eroded a passage in the lava rock at the western end to begin flowing into the lower end of the Canyon, the
Grand Parashant and current Lake Mead locale. Water flooded down from the sweep across the Snake River Plain, down across western Utah, all of Nevada
and the eastern flanks of the (likely) newly risen Sierras, stoppered at Black Canyon (south of Hoover Dam), across to the Transverse Mountains of
California, allowing some of that water to spill into the Big Valley, probably flooding it to a shallow depth, a few hundred feet at most, until the
silting plugged all but trickles. The same reason water couldn't get through the Black Canyon of the Colorado, for close to a millennium, applied at
Black the canyon. The "canyon" was filled with hard black lava rock, only allowing a little water to move through circuitous routes, until enough
water could pass, to start the process of "erosion". By that time, hundreds of acre-feet per hour were flowing. Over the centuries, that increased
to a heavy flow, draining off water that had been stranded between the Rockies, and an outlet. This affected local peoples in ways we still talk
about today. I address this idea in detail, in my work in chief, The Arrival of God.
I suspect the Colorado Plateau began its uplift, then, not ""millions of years" ago, but concurrent with the early evets of the Exodus "cycle", the
events in the Bible ending with the escape of the Jews. I have a simple reason for this: If these events actually took place, there should be some
evidence remaining, they were so dramatic and life-altering for the survivors. In fact, there is evidence of every-but the "steady-state" world
geologists, historians, paleobotanists, archaeologists, and others INSIST is the case, for "millions of years". It's as if, to these worthies, Earth
and its peoples (and animals et al) went into stasis, since 1,000,000 BC.
Apologies to Raquel Welch, but I call that kind of thinking "Six Blind Indian Fakirs Describing an Elephant". You know, one said it was a hose,
another said a fan, a third said a wall, and another a tree trunk, and the last said a rope. Geologists do a lot of that, conflating evidence of one
event with another. To be fair, their subject matter are rocks and dirt. Archaeologists have less of a defense, other than all the myriad ways
humans can figure out how to be evil, or cruel, and historians usually stick to the accepted narrative, eschewing anything that sounds "fantastic",
which much of this story does. That's what happens, when you play marbles with God's agates, one might say.
If you are interested in the tidbits I've dropped here (there are many, many more), please drop me a line. I've been researching this topic for most
of the last 50 years, since Fall 1976. I've ridden, driven, walked, rafted, floated, and flown over the western US since 1953, long before
Interstates, most fences, or very many people, in many areas, and have traveled to Europe, Africa, and Asia, all but six states, Canada and Mexico,
extensively, so I feel comfortable in my views and assumptions. The Earth was terrorized for 780 years, between circa 1500BC and 720BC, resulting in
EVERY SURFACE having been overwashed by "tsunamis" repeatedly. The only "old" terrain is ancient sea beds: The southwestern US desert, the area north
of the Himalayas, bounded by the Taklamakan Desert, and the northeastern region of Canada, mostly known as Nunavet, around Hudson's Bay. on a line
starting at 69N 108W, south-southeasterly to around 57N 102W, then easterly to 53N87W, then south around a curve, to line up to the Saint Lawrence
Seaway. All that area was seabed, until Joshua's time, raised out of the "depths" (the oceans were likely much shallower, then, maybe as much as 25%
(more about that in TAoG), but I estimate about 500 trillion acre-feet of water was displaced, by the uplift of the Cordillera, spilling over into the
western US, then down, eventually, centuries later, into the Gulf of Baja (take a look at the end of that body, on Google Maps. It's a wonder.
Enough for now. We live in "exciting times", as the old Irish curse goes, but nothing at all like the times of Exodus, Joshua, Isaiah, Daniel and
Ezekiel. Those guys got the E-ticket ride of all E-ticket rides. It's sad their story was larded over with "God is good, God is great" religious
drivel by people plainly scared out of their freaking minds. And, deservedly so.
Again, I ask, If anyone has an address where I can write to Mr Gilbertson, I would appreciate it.